Gmail baits phishing spam, demonstrating there is a public good in email scanning

By Richard Koman - April 10, 2005

Google has been testing phishing detection in Gmail. I just noticed it tonight but SVW reader Eric Pederson comments below that he first saw it a few months ago. In their battle of one-upmanship with Yahoo Mail, phishing detection is a huge advantage.

Presumably they can do this because they're scanning the contents of your mail. While this drives privacy advocates nuts [The Register], that fact provides them a lot of power to deliver features that users need. Email providers have a moral responsibility to try to protect their users, and now that Google has shown a way to identify phishing, could other providers have a legal responsibility to offer similar protections?

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By Richard Koman - April 10, 2005 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Tech Watch
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Comments (4)


I saw this anti-phishing message in my gmail account probably 60 days ago. So it seems they have been testing it for some while.

It really bowled me over when I saw it - a real winner. It was the perfect re-affirmation that I was looking at something suspicious. Thumbs up!


jojo:

Wonderful! But do you really want your ISP reading your email to do a similar trick? I don't! This is why I don't use my gmail account very much.


ascii:

SongZilla_Blogg, who are we kidding?! you know very well for sure that your ISP can, and does track your email. nothing for sure is secure unless you manage your own email service (in which case, i do. and heck, there's still this possibility that my mail can be sniffed). anyway, i use gmail, and am very happy with it. the only assurance you can get is that gmail has a privacy policy which binds them from using the information in your email for tracking you down, or from snooping around. all email service providers have this, and this protects us legally. sue them if you think they're reading your mail. but i guess we expect too much from free email services. nothing is full proof(or fool proof for that matter).


drewnels:

I noticed that feature way back in August of 2004. It's nothing new.